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The Gimlet

The Gimlet is perhaps my favourite gin cocktail. This simple serving though, is not without its share of controversy as over time a growing group of ‘cocktail police’ began to insist that the libation must be made in a particular way in order to properly be called a Gimlet. Any other construction they maintained ws not the bar drink which we call the Gimlet.

At the center of this controversy is a lime cordial called Rose’s Lime, which according to those aforementioned ‘protectors of the cocktail’ must be used in the bar drink’s construction rather than sweetened lime juice. I did a bit of research, and discovered that the controversy over the Gimlet stretched back to at least 1953 when a description found in the Raymond Chandler novel, The Long Goodbye, stated:

The fact that this statement made it into Chandler’s novel indicates that bartenders of the time were already arguing over the proper form of this simple cocktail, and it very well could be that the popularity of Raymond Chandler as a novelist and screenwriter fueled the belief among those Cocktail Police that this was the only construction that should be considered as proper.

However; If one goes back even further in time (all the way to 1928), we can find a different viewpoint put forward by D.B. Wesson in his book, I’ll never be Cured, where his description of the Gimlet is:

“gin, a spot of lime, and soda.”

Apparently, in this earlier period, the recipe for the Gimlet was more generic and even included soda as the sweetener. This indicates to me that the narrative put forward by the aforementioned cocktail protectors should be reassessed.

The truth is that we have not found a definitive starting point for the recipe of the Gimlet. It is also true that almost all bar servings evolve over time as better ingredients are discovered, and newer versions of the mixed servings are put forward. Even the word ‘cocktail’ has evolved over time from its beginnings when the term referred to a very specific style of bar drink to the present when it now refers to a large variety of bar drinks.

I say, let’s avoid stagnation and allow evolution to continue!

Here is the Gimlet in it’s most basic form mixed with one of my favorite Dry Gins, No 3 London Dry Gin and fresh Lime Juice: